


The Green Dress

by peregrinning



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Romance, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 21:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7986283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peregrinning/pseuds/peregrinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cormoran and Robin attend a party at a powerful financial company they are investigating. Despite the possibility of a major breakthrough on their case, Cormoran can't focus on anything other than Robin's green silk dress. </p>
<p>Story one of two with a similar premise and some very similar features as I had two ideas that I wanted to explore. This story focuses more on the relationship between Cormoran and Robin rather than on any details of their case. </p>
<p>Third person, Cormoran's POV</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Green Dress

The case was a difficult one. The opulent world of finance, coupled with seedy black-market deals, lies, threats and mysterious disappearances or accidents. 

He and Robin had been working so hard on this, spending hours looking over documents, chasing down informants, staking out glittering high-rises and smoky back-alley pubs alike. Robin in particular seemed to have put everything she had into this one. No doubt it helped in the aftermath of the terrible breakup with Matthew to stay busy, though Cormoran knew she would have worked very hard and with her usual skill no matter what. 

He certainly could not complain. He greatly enjoyed both her company and her insights and it was nice to be able to work late, especially when gripped by investigative fervour, without the shadow of Matthew hanging over them and Robin’s need to head home before Matthew would get too upset or angry. She seemed happier too.

Of course, this had complicated matters for him. His feelings for her were growing ever stronger; he tried to stave them off by going on dates with other women sometimes, but he always ended up compared them to Robin, and they always came up short somehow. 

And now they had this wonderful opportunity to attend a party at Higgins-Busch. It was an opportunity to get so close to people they’d been investigating, and to observe them around each other, with guards down and motivations perhaps less hidden, liberated by the presence of food, alcohol and music. Not to mention taking photographs and perhaps (if they were really lucky) even getting to copy some important documents or sneak off to an office somewhere. 

The trouble was that they had to go together. 

 

They’d arranged for a cab to pick Robin up from her flat first, then it would come around and pick Cormoran up too. This not being the type of occasion where you could take the Tube, at least sharing a cab would cut down expenses, and have them arrive at the party together. 

And when he got in the cab, he knew he was so fucked. Because Robin was wearing the dress. THE dress. The green dress he’d given her, the only dress in the whole of history that had ever mattered, that had ever even _existed_. Her hair was swept up, exposing her long and beautiful neck. 

“You look lovely” he said. 

Clear blue-grey eyes turned to meet his and she gave him a small smile. 

“It’s good to have an opportunity to dress up sometimes. Your suit’s nice too”.

She opened a small clutch next to her on the seat. 

“I’ve put a little microphone in here. I know that we’ll mostly just get hours of background noise. But just in case”, then she added with a cheeky smile, “and obviously I’ll be needing to take a lot of selfies. You never know what might be in the background of one of those”

He chuckled. “Be sure to take them from lots of different angles. You have to find the most flattering one, after all”. 

She grinned, but became serious. “Of course, we want to try and get as much information as we can. Ideally, I hope we can get into some offices. Do we have a plan of attack?”. 

The rest of the cab ride passed in discussion of the best ways to utilise the opportunities the party had given them. 

 

They were in another cab on the way home, reversing their inward journey, and Cormoran was not focused on their case at all. They had made some amazing discoveries, and Robin’s eyes were sparkling, and no, he couldn’t focus on the case at all. Not when her eyes looked like that. Not then she was wearing that dress. 

He suddenly realised she was asking him a question. 

“Sorry, what was that?” he said. 

“I was just wondering if you wanted to keep working. There’s no way I could just go home and sleep now. I need to keep digging. So maybe we should just stop at the office?”. 

His mind immediately filled with images of taking her into the office and, instead of working, lifting her onto the desk, bending down to kiss her, green silk slowly sliding off lightly freckled skin…

Fuck. He was doomed. 

All this time, he’d been telling himself that he could not go there, because it would absolutely ruin their working relationship. But he had to he finally admit it to himself; it was already ruined. Because he’d already fallen in love with her. 

“You look so beautiful tonight” he found himself telling her instead of answering her question. Maybe he’d drunk more of the champagne than he had thought. Or maybe he was just drunk from being around her, from how she looked, from pretending to be her partner the entire evening. “When you wear that dress, you just look…so beautiful” he said again, helplessly. 

She was quiet for a moment and he felt scared, ready to backtrack, to return to shop talk. But then she replied in hardly more than a whisper, “I wore it for you”. 

And then she was facing him and his hand came up to touch her cheek and he said “Robin”, and then he was kissing her. 

 

The cab continued through the dark streets and he’d reached a point where he was trying to pull her onto his lap when the cabbie pulled over. 

“Stop number one” he said in a long-suffering tone. 

Cormoran and Robin broke apart and he realised in a panic that he had no idea what to do next. Should he invite her in, or would that be too forward? Would she suddenly come to her senses and demand the cabbie drive her on? 

 “I’m so sorry”, Robin said firmly, “but we’ll just have the one stop”. 

The cabbie gave her a look as if to say, yes obviously, took the proferred money, then left. 

 

She was holding his hand as they headed up the rickety stairs and then reached the landing to his office.  

Knowing that he had to ask, had to let this end now if that was what she wanted, he said, “er…would you like to go into the office to work or would you like to…come upstairs for a…drink?” (that was terrible, he thought wildly). 

She just smiled at him. “Of course I’d like to come upstairs”. 

 

So they went upstairs. They didn't have a drink. He was too scared that if they stopped for something like that, the dream would end. Tomorrow would already be complicated enough; might as well go the whole hog while he still could. 

Instead they went to bed and he lived out the fantasy of slowly taking off that silky green dress. She gasped and sighed under his hands and mouth and when he took his clothes off, there was no fear of judgement or pity when she saw his stump. All she did was check, in a very matter-of-fact way, if he wanted to remove the prosthetic. When he responded in the affirmative, she just kissed his neck and shoulders while he removed it. He’d never felt this safe or cared about undressing in front of a woman, or not since his amputation, and it made him fall for her even more. 

When they had sex, she was on top, in control the whole time. He wasn’t sure if he was the only person other than Matthew that she’d slept with, but he hoped that she felt safe and powerful. That was so important to him, especially knowing the past she’d been through.  

When they fell asleep together, she was tucked under his arm and his last thought was that if he’d fucked everything up, at least it was for something as good as _that_. 


End file.
